North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Kim Yo Jong spurns Seoul’s overtures, and US targets North Korean laptop farms

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

North Korea broke its relative silence about the new South Korean administration of Lee Jae-myung on Monday, with the DPRK leader’s sister Kim Yo Jong dismissing the president’s peace overtures and attacking Seoul’s alliance with the U.S. NK News Lead Correspondent Shreyas Reddy joins the podcast to discuss why North Korea’s proverbial “bad cop” suddenly […]

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Explore our range today at shop.nknews.org. That's shop.nknews.org. Hello listeners and welcome to the New York Times. I'm your host, David Hicks. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times.

I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times.

I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm the host of this edition of the New York Times. I'm your host, Jacko Zwetsud, and this episode is being recorded here in the NK News studio on the morning of Tuesday, the 29th of July, 2025. Welcome back to the podcast, Traos Ready. Good to see you, Jacko. It's not often that I read a story on NK Pro and find that my opinion aligns with that of Kim

Yeo-jung, the younger sister of Kim Jong-un. But when she called Minister of Unification Jong Dong-yong's push to invite North Korea to the upcoming APEC summit in late October this year, a daydream, I thought to myself, yeah, she's not far from the truth there. Yeah, I think it definitely aligns with what I've heard from some others in the past week. The EJM Young administration certainly has been a little optimistic, at times over-optimistic, with its hopes of essentially restoring inter-Korean engagement to, well, what it once was, but perhaps even taking it further. And at this point, it does not seem all that realistic. And in this case, Kim Yo-jong basically dismissed,

it was the first real communication from Pyongyang directly aimed at Lee Jae-myeong since he became president last month. And Kim Yo-jong said that North Korea will never resume dialogue with the South. So they'll reject all of E.J. Myung's efforts. And essentially they've said, and I quote, there can be no change in our state's perception of South Korea as the enemy. So we're not really going to see North Korea deviating from the position it has held since December 2023 when Kim Jong-un essentially declared unification an impossible goal and

turned his back on inter-Korean engagement. At least there's nothing at the moment to shift the calculus no matter what Lee Jae-myeong and his cabinet may hope for. Yes, and Kim Yo-jong wrote this in her official capacity as, insert title here. Well, so to be honest with Kim Yo-jong, there's always a bit of a… There is some ambiguity there, isn't there? Yeah, she's most often described as a deputy director of the ruling party central committee. And that is essentially what the state media statements

went with this time. It's kind of been interesting with her role in the last few years where she has occasionally fluctuated between just focusing entirely on inter-Korean matters to talking about, as she did today, talking about the US. So she released a follow-up statement just this morning, essentially saying that talks with the US are possible

if the US is willing to drop its demand for denuclearization, which so far has not been the case, but I think they want to see if they can just push the boundaries a little bit with Donald Trump, who's more than willing to go against the Korean when it comes to Washington's policies. Indeed. But staying with the, with her statement addressed at South Korea, which was carried by the Korean Central News Agency on Monday, you know, the sort of surface reading of that is, okay, there's no chance for anything.

And yet when I read the analysis by our colleague Jongmin Kim, what to make of Kim Yo-jong's dismissive attack, she seems to suggest that it leaves some wiggle room for the Lee Jae-myung administration to do something that pleases Kim Jong-un and his regime. Yeah, I think essentially part of it comes down to the fact that there's an inherent contradiction between North Korea constantly stating We have no interest in anything related to the South but at the same time Constantly releasing statements like this constantly talking about South Korea Right and also showing that it keeps a close eye on what South Korea is doing like the the debate around changing the name of

Unification Ministry. Yes, so they're following all that. They're paying attention to things like the unification minister making that proposal about APEC. And the fact is they're clearly interested more than they let on. Now, whether that interest comes out of sheer hatred or whether they're looking to get something out of it, that is still a matter of debate. But certainly there is a possibility that at the moment with the EJ Myung administration incredibly keen to make engagement happen by any means, Pyongyang may send some sort of opportunity to keep just needling soul until eventually maybe they do something that may not necessarily have been on the agenda to begin with, that may not have been something North Korea even

demanded directly. Like for example, at the end of last evening, the unification minister talked about potentially scaling back US, South Korea military exercises. Right. So this is a concrete thing that North Korea has always said over the years, over the decades that at once it wants either no or much smaller exercises, particularly combined exercises between the Republic of Korea and the United States of America. Yeah, and at this stage North Korea essentially doesn't have to change anything it's doing. It can either, so it can keep having this mix of ignoring South Korea and insulting

it. And if that continues, it'll still suit its current foreign policy stance. And if South Korea does go and essentially alter its policies, some would even say bend over backwards to try and do something to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table, relatively unprompted, then that also suits North Korea just fine. Interesting, just a little side note here that the statement by Kim Yo-jong uses the term johan gwanghae to denote DPRK-ROK relations rather than North-South or inter-Korean relations. So that's once again a linguistic reinforcement of this new status since December 2023 that

they're two separate countries. We're not two halves of a divided country and we're not coming back together anytime soon. Pretty much. I think that at least something that they have been consistent about saying, you know, unifications of the agenda, we're not, we're going to treat South Korea separate. So which is why they've also gone ahead and tried to build barriers along the DMZ, tried to redefine borders, trying to essentially mark the two Koreas as separate, while at the same time, essentially also very much setting the stage for a more adversarial approach, which frankly, over the past year, before E.J. Myung became president, was there from

both sides. Now, all this heat from Kim Jongjong might be an attempt to influence President E.J. Myong's August 15 speech just in just over two weeks from now for the anniversary, the 80th anniversary of the end of Japanese colonization at the end of the Second World War. And often presidents in these speeches, these statements give some kind of an indication about North-South policy. So you know let's see in a couple of weeks time what Lee Jae-myeong says.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how much he really touches upon the situation. Interestingly, over the weekend, it was also the anniversary of the Korean War armistice. And Lee Jae-myeong did not directly give a speech or make a comment on social media, as he has done for some other things. But there was a readout of a speech sent make a comment on social media as he has done for some other things.

But there was a readout of a speech sent from his office in Washington, where essentially the emphasis was more on the US alliance more than anything else. But I suspect in the next month, especially with everything that's going on now, they may want to reiterate that message of being open to talks. And that was certainly something that the Unification Ministry and the Presidential Office and Lee Jae-myeong reiterated yesterday after Kim Yo-jong's statement,

where they basically did not really back down as such. It was more that they said they're still keen to establish peace with North Korea, keen to push forward and create a Korean peninsula without hostility or war. And that is something that maybe seems a little like it's ignoring what Kim Yo-jong said, but at the same time, it's entirely consistent with the current administration's policy that even when they know things have stalled, they're going to keep pushing with North Korea hoping that eventually they can

change Pyongyang's mind. Yes, let's see. Okay, now what in the United States, what is an easy way but also a risky way to make a lot of money? Honestly, I'm very curious to see. Oh, yes. Start a laptop farm for North Korea. Oh, yes, absolutely. Well, that

is something that has been quite active for North Korea in terms of money making and sanctions of Asia in the last few years. But what is a laptop farm for our listeners who don't yet know? Yes, so well first let's go back to the North Korean IT worker problem, which is essentially North Korea sending out thousands of skilled technicians to work in other countries, usually friendly countries like China, Russia, Laos. India?

Well, not that I know of in recent years, but who knows. But certainly they've been based out of these countries and while there, they've tried to secure jobs with leading companies around the world, particularly in the West, particularly in the US. Outsource jobs, work from home jobs. Yeah. So remote, anything that's basically remote IT job, they try and do while fabricating their identities. They try to pass themselves off as, let's say, American citizens, citizens of other countries in Southeast Asia, for example, and get these jobs with a lot of American firms in particular, but now also increasingly Europe and other regions.

And from there, they essentially try to earn a steady source of income for the regime. In US dollars? Yes, in US dollars, some much needed foreign currency for a cash-strapped country. But at the same time, also potentially, well, not potentially, they certainly have already done it. They set the stage for future exploitation, future attacks and data theft. If for some reason that source of income dries out, for example, if they get discovered and fired, they can then go and take advantage of the access they already had.

Right, through a back door or a trojan. But where do the laptop farms enter? So quite often to make these recruitment schemes work, they need some assistance. For example, they might need help with obtaining fake identities, fabricating them. They might need help with, in some cases, directly corresponding with the companies who then want to send their own internal company laptops to the remote workers to be able to carry out their jobs. But as far as these companies are concerned, they've hired Americans living in America. And so they need an address to send it to. So in those cases, these facilitators,

these intermediaries, essentially go and receive the laptops at their home or some other site that they control and then host a whole bunch of laptops in one site. And so that is a laptop farm. And these laptops, they then go and configure for remote access so that the North Korean IT workers, whichever country they're in, can use those to access their target companies' networks, their systems,

and essentially pass themselves off as still working in the US while actually being elsewhere. And one woman in Arizona got caught doing this. And it looks like that particular farm generated more than 17 million dollars of income for North Korea and she's now gone to another kind of farm for eight years. Yes, so this is Arizona native Christina Chapman who she was one of the first high profile arrests in the US crackdown on these IT farms and their facilitators. So on these IT workers and their facilitators. And she was arrest... Well, the authorities originally searched her laptop farm in October 2023.

There's a photograph of it in the story. Our listeners will find. Indeed, lots of laptops just all labeled. It looks like a full-time job. Pretty much. She had a lot of laptops in her home, but she also, according to the story, shipped 49 laptops to other countries. Yeah. So essentially the ones that they didn't need to pass off as being in the US or for whatever

reason, they were able to make that work. So she hosted so many of these laptops and she was also very much in touch with the North Korean IT worker ring indirectly at least. She was in touch with the manager who we know simply by the alias, Shonghua. So most likely it is pretty much a China-based network from what the court documents have revealed. And so she knew that whatever she was doing she was trying to get access for people who weren't allowed to work in the US who weren't working in the US. So she may not have known she was working for the North Korean state but she knew she was working for naughty people who shouldn't

have been there. At the very least yes. So I think even the court documents did say that at the way least she knew she was doing something illegal. And helped them get jobs at 309 US firms, no less. I mean, that is incredible. Yeah, and many of them like fortune 500 companies. So it's not even like it was just some small unsuspecting ones. They managed to get around some pretty what one would imagine would be rigorous hiring procedures, got through and yeah, passed themselves off for years to earn money for the North Korean regime's

nuclear and missile development. Extraordinary. And in a related development, the United States has blacklisted a North Korean company and three individuals over related IT worker schemes. That's right. So the same day that Krishna Chapman was sentenced after having pled guilty a few months earlier, the same day the Treasury announced sanctions against the Korea Sobex So trading company, which is a North Korean company based in Tandong, China, and three North Koreans, so Kim Se-hyun,

Jo Kyung-hun, and Myung Chol-min, who were associated with partly with that company, but also with other North Korean sanctions evasion activities, including smuggling tobacco to and from North Korea, which is something that has been a big fundraiser for North Korea for years. And honestly, this kind of shows that there is quite often when we look at North Korea cyber activities or smuggling activities or whatever, people look at them as slightly different streams of illicit activity. But as we can see from here, there's a big overlap.

They're essentially part of a big illicit revenue chain and all of it goes back to the same destination in the end. Right. And I've got to say, in this story here, there's also a mention of three or four other people. I would like very much to meet Mr. Ri Dong Min, nicknamed Elvis, and just find out how he came about with that nickname. Seems like an interesting fellow, but yeah, he's accused of doing some bad things. So let's see what happens then. Yeah so basically like you said there are a few others so the State Department offered rewards of for a bunch of these people

for seven North Koreans including two of those IT workers who were sanctioned so they got three million dollars each so Kim Se-hyun and Myung-chul Min but there's a seven million dollar award for Shim Hyun-seop, who has long been on Washington's radar. They sanctioned him in 2023 for his work with IT workers. He's also been involved in the tobacco smuggling activities. And he even allegedly attempted to purchase a helicopter from a Russian supplier, which really is honestly, that man's all over the place.

But yes, all in all, the State Department of Rewards totaling up to about $15 million. So there's another good way to make money in the United States. Now, since we've gone a little bit over time, you have exactly one minute, Shreyas, to preview your own story here. I encourage listeners to go and have a look at it. How North Korea hijacked America's national pastime to take a swing at the US. Just preview it. Yes, so essentially last week the world baseball chief made his first ever visit to North Korea

and you think, hang on, does North Korea even play baseball? Well, they've had a long history with the sport, going back to pre-division Korea, the Japanese Imperial era. But after the war, they kind of tried to remove any traces of that because it was associated with the US, with the Japanese Empire. Still, it stuck around for a while and part of it was down to the influence of Cuba, the influence of ethnic Koreans from Japan, but they also used it to essentially keep taking shots at the US. So try to use it to celebrate the US defeats or paint their own propaganda messages about how an ragtag team of underdogs can always beat bigger

powers like the imperialists, like the US, like Japan and all. And so on and off they keep using it for propaganda to attack their enemies, even the ones who are more closely associated with the game than North Korea. Everyone loves an underdog story. I presume that the head of the World Baseball, whatever the name of the organization is, is not a US citizen? He is Italian. Ah, okay. Very good. All right. So check that one out on the website.

Shreyas Reddy, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. We'll see you again soon. Thank you. Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast evolving political business and cultural landscape? Join us on Korea Pro, the go-to resource for in-depth analysis, expertly curated by top-tier professionals. And now you can pick the membership level that best suits your needs, thanks to our new subscription packages.

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